1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to method of lease auctioning.
2. Description of the Prior Art
On-line auctioning, particularly reverse auctions, for the sale or lease of products has become commonplace. Auction web sites often provide prospective lessees the ability to post request for quotes (RFQs) on their web page for prospective lessors to review before or during an auction.
Much of the lease process is highly quantitative. However, often, qualitative information, known only to the lessee, affects the lessee's decision to enter into a lease with a particular lessor. This qualitative information can include the loan documents, i.e., the terms and conditions of the lease, the prior experience of the lessee with the prospective lessor, the reputation of the lessor, the lessor's knowledge of the product being leased, whether the lessor is a public or private company, whether the lessor is also a vendor of the leased product and so forth.
Presently, on-line lease auctioning methods do not provide for the lessee to communicate such qualitative information to a prospective lessor before or during an auction and do not provide a prospective lessor with any feedback on this qualitative information during an auction.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to overcome the above problem and others by providing a computer-based on-line auctioning method for enabling a lessee to communicate to prospective lessors, before and/or during an auction, qualitative information that enables each prospective lessor to determine the effect of such qualitative information on the lessee's decision to accept a bidIt is another object of the invention to provide an on-line method for enabling a lessee to run one or more simulation leases that include estimated quantitative data and qualitative data prior to conducting an auction and then utilize this data in the RFQ supplied to prospective lessors before or during the auction. Still other objects of the present invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description.